Risen 2: Dark Waters PC Preview - PAGE 1

Pirate RPG Risen 2: Dark Waters is nearing its release on PC, 360, and PS3, and with that comes our first hands-on impressions. In brief, it's more or less the same classic gameplay from Gothic, Gothic II, and Risen, but with some exciting new elements woven in. Whether you've played them or not, know it's shaping up to be an engrossing adventure filled with unique gameplay and some of the most funny dialogue around.

Meet the pirates

Developer Piranha Bytes has always used factions as the foundation for progressing plot, quests, and abilities in its RPGs, and Risen 2 is no different. The ever pompous Inquisition returns, but also two new groups: the tribals and the pirates. You'll be joining up with the latter and sporting various guns and swords as you wish (homeade or bought); with the tribals there's the opportunity to dive into the dark world of black magic and voodoo. Unfortunately I got no real time with the latter, but I can say you'll have access to talisman, sceptre, and amulet making abilities, plus curses and more.

Help from friends

Companions are said to make their way in and out of your party (only two to a party, mind). In the preview build I saw only Patty, a familiar character (though not face) from Risen, who's sassy and independent as ever. She's a tough customer, to the point where it seems she's overcompensating for over a decade of male chauvinism in the Gothic and Risen universes, which didn't do her much good when I put her on kitchen duty in one quest.

Patty comes in especially handy in this early portion of the game (notoriously the toughest in anything Piranha works on) -- often I'd lure enemies to her and let her take care of them, sometimes helping, but mostly just watching her kick ass while I reaped the experience. This doesn't always work, mind you -- she went down quick to a Grave Spider (giant arachnid that pops up from the ground), at which point I introduced it to the business end of my shotgun.

Questing the old fashioned way

Quests are happily free of glowing trails and all that garbage, so if you're thinking about fitting this in between Dora the Explorer games, stop doing that immediately. If you want to know how to complete a quest, you'll just have to listen to what people have to say (or filter through the conversation logs afterward). Listening is pleasant, however: this is the same high caliber voice acting as in Risen, in part because many of the same voice actors return.

Beyond that it's down to exploring, which proves more exciting than in most RPGs: around every other corner there's either a beautiful sight to take in, treasure to dig up, enemies to pop open, or a cave to explore. The game succeeds extremely well in that even if you're doing nothing in particular, you're having terrible fun doing it.

A couple of complaints

There are but two downsides to Risen 2 at this stage: strange art design for characters, and suboptimal performance.

The character thing is really down to preference, but I can't help feel this new softer style is inferior to the more realistic approach in Risen, as it makes it look cheap and low budget at times, and also hurts immersion some. Regardless, it's not hard to ignore for the most part: it's so much fun adventuring I wasn't thinking much on it.

Performance is a different story. It's not outright bad by any means (on hardware well exceeding the requirements at nearly max settings it averages about 60fps, and sticks around there for the most part), but regardless, there's a usually noticeable and distracting stuttering in place of smoothness. I'd hope the game to be better optimized by release; if not, it's still recommendable to be sure, but would definitely lose some points there.

In the end

The bottom line is Risen 2 feels like coming home again, and I'm absolutely excited for the final release in April. For those new or returning, it should feel like a refreshing, unique RPG full of life and adventure.